


Children of Krypton #6

by Vigs



Series: One Multiverse Over [13]
Category: DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kara is super femme, Kara is super gay, Press and Tabloids, Sexual Harassment, sex work mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-10-30 00:12:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17818187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vigs/pseuds/Vigs
Summary: Supergirl is ready to make her debut, or thinks she is until the media gets ahold of her.





	1. Kara

**Author's Note:**

> CN: public speaking worst-case scenario

Kara was so, so,  _ so _ ready to make her public debut as Supergirl. She wanted to help people! She wanted to help Clark! She wanted to talk to people and make friends and really get to know her new planet as one of its people, not just an observer.

Everyone else was less enthusiastic.

"Some people are going to hate you," Clark warned for what felt like the millionth time. "And some people are going to basically  _ worship _ you. It's a really weird and uncomfortable feeling either way."

"The only men you know so far are Clark and John," Ma pointed out. "You haven't had to face sexism yet. Reading about it happening to other people isn't the same."

Pa didn't nag, which made sense because honestly he didn't talk that much in general, but he gave her grave, level looks sometimes, and honestly those worried her more than all the spoken warnings. When people made arguments, she could argue back; there was nothing she could say to that look, reminding her just how high the stakes were.

So she convinced them to let her take baby steps. Clark brought her to STAR Labs and introduced her to all the scientists he worked with, who were used to being around Superman enough that they didn't freak out about her being there too. They measured a bunch of her powers and found that, no duh, they were about the same as Clark's. They also let her use the same training dummy that Clark practiced on. The dummy had a bunch of fancy force sensors and stuff in it, so she could practice incapacitating people without doing permanent damage.

Clark still made her practice fighting with him too, though. He insisted that she needed somebody who would fight back, and that she needed practice putting her fist into an actual living face, which was probably the hardest part. But it was hard because it was  _ Clark _ . She was sure she could hit some random jerk way more easily than she could hit him.

Finally, even Clark had to admit that she wasn't going to get any more prepared without actually being "in the field," which was a funny expression because right now she was spending a lot of her time in fields. She wanted to be in the  _ city _ .

"So, if you want, you can just sort of... start helping people," he said. "That's what I did. But people got very curious about me very quickly, and some of them were more suspicious than they might have been otherwise because I didn't really introduce myself first. Lois thinks you should have a press conference, but I think it might be better if you did more of a press release; some kind of prepared statement, maybe even a video that you could send out to the TV news stations, but not a bunch of reporters asking you questions. That can be tough."

"No, that's what I want to do," Kara told him. "I want to answer all their questions and get it over with, you know? A prepared statement seems like it would feel too fake."

Clark tried to argue with her, but she insisted. She sort of regretted that when she saw the crowd of journalists that had gathered; she hadn't been around that many people at once in years, and they were all waiting for her to start talking.

Well, if she was going to be a superhero, she would have to do scary things. She squared her shoulders, emboldened by the feeling of her cape bumping against the small of her back, and stepped forward into the room and up to the microphone. Lois and Clark were in the front row; Clark had offered to be there as Superman, but she'd turned him down. This was her moment to greet her new world.

"Hi," she said into the array of microphones. Clark had also wanted to edit her statement, but she didn't let him do that either. "I'm Supergirl. I'm from Krypton, the same planet Superman is from. We're the only ones who survived its destruction. I was brought to this planet by Brainiac, who tried to use me as a bribe for Superman, but Superman helped me escape. I've been spending some time getting used to being on Earth and having superpowers and everything, but I hope to help Superman protect this city and this planet from now on. I think this is a really great planet, and I want to help it be even better. Um, I'm new to Earth customs and everything, so I apologize in advance if I mess up or seem rude. I just want to help people and make friends. That's all I've got to say, so... questions?"

Pretty much every hand in the room shot up, and there was a babble of noise. It would probably be rude to pick Lois first, since she'd already done an interview with Lois.

"Uh, you with the red tie," she said, pointing at a man towards the back.

"Calvin Brockerin,  _ Metropolis Inquisitor _ ," the man said. "What do you have to say to those who believe that you're actually Superman's child with a human woman?"

"What?" Kara blinked. "Um, Kryptonians and humans couldn't possibly reproduce. We're different species, from different planets. I know we look a lot alike, but... no. That's not possible, and it's definitely not what happened. I grew up on Krypton, and actually I was born before Superman; I was just in stasis for longer than he was, which is why he's older now. Uh, next—"

"But if you aren't half-human, and Superman isn't the last Kryptonian as he claimed, how do we know there aren't more of you?" Calvin Brokerin interrupted.

"It's very unlikely," Kara said, not really wanting to get into the subject of her planet's destruction. "Um, the woman in green over there, what's your question?"

"Mari Devon, WMOB," the woman said. "Do you and Superman plan to reproduce and bring back the Kryptonian species?"

"Ew," Kara said, making a face. "He's my cousin. And even if he wasn't, you can't repopulate a whole species starting from just two. Humans know about that, right? Genetic diversity? The Kryptonian species is effectively extinct. We're just sort of the leftovers. Does anyone have a question that isn't about how my whole species is dead?"

"Ben Geck, LEX News," a man said, standing up. "You said you want to help make the Earth better. What exactly do you think is wrong with our planet? How are you planning to change it?"

"I didn't mean it like that," Kara protested. "I think the Earth is great! You've got some problems with violence and natural disasters, and I want to help with those, the same way Superman does. Not that those are the only problems, but I'm not here to run your species; I just want to help out."

She'd been expecting questions about who she was as a person, or maybe people asking for reassurance that she had enough control over her powers not to hurt anybody, not... this.

"In the front," she said, pointing to Lois. She'd give her an easy one, right?

"Lois Lane,  _ Daily Planet _ ," Lois said. "Are your powers the same as Superman's?"

"Yes!" Kara said, grateful for the reasonable question. "Yes, I've done tests with Superman and with the scientists at STAR Labs, and my powers are the same as his, and at this point, just as strong as his. The only thing I don't have is practice, but I'm going to do my best to catch up with him there, too. Let's see, man in the yellow shirt, what's your question?"

"Why the schoolgirl outfit?" the man asked, not introducing himself.

"Schoolgirl?" Kara repeated, confused. "I just think it looks nice. I don't really feel the cold, so I just picked a design that I thought was cute. Um, there are shorts under the skirt, if you're worried about how it'll look when I'm flying around and stuff. Next question, uh..."

"Rich Langstrom,  _ The Rich Langstrom Show _ ," a man said without being called on. "Where have you been hiding for all these months? What gives you and Superman the right to operate outside the law? What gives you the right to even be in this country?"

"What? It's not like that, it's just, we can do more than most people, so we do," she said. "And... do people not want me to be in this country? I mean, I didn't come here voluntarily, but I'll leave if you want me to go..."

"So you don't actually care about America?" Rich Langstrom demanded. "It's just where you happen to be right now?"

"I guess?" Kara said. She had a feeling that was the wrong answer, but wasn't sure what the  _ right _ answer would be. "I'm sorry, I don't really understand about countries. Krypton didn't have those."

"Oh, so you'd be in favor of a One World Government?" he asked. She could practically hear the capital letters, but she had no idea what he was talking about.

"You mean a single government for the whole world?" she asked. "I don't know. I guess there'd be fewer wars, which would be good. But I'm not here to tell you what kind of government to have. I just want to help people."

"By undermining the legitimate authorities, and spreading your un-American ideals, and—"

"I think it's someone else's turn to ask a question," she said, and called on someone else.

It was sort of a blur after that. Some of the questions were harmless, if also kind of pointless: Who designed her outfit? Who did her hair? A lot of them were much more suspicious: Were she and Clark the advance guard of an invasion force? Did she think Kryptonians were superior to humans? How did she learn English so quickly? Why wasn't she speaking more about Lex Luthor's role in reviving her? And then there were the ones that were just confusing: Was showing her bellybutton a political statement? How did she think human men "measured up" to Kryptonian men? She answered all of them as well as she could, but so many were angry accusations thrown at her by people who didn't even know her. Wasn't this supposed to be about getting to know her? She'd wanted to talk about how beautiful and green Sol was, and how much she loved the smell of plants and the taste of Earth food.

"You're allowed to end it," she heard Clark say, and for a minute she panicked, thinking she'd made him blow his cover, but of course he'd just pitched his voice in a range that humans couldn't hear. "Just say 'No more questions, please.'"

"No more questions, please," Kara repeated, and fled from the room like it was full of kryptonite robots.


	2. Clark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the irregular posting lately. Real Life has been getting in the way.

He really had done everything he could to warn her. Clark kept reminding himself of that while Kara cried into his shoulder, not so that he could say "I told you so," but so that he wouldn't start blaming himself and crying too.

"People are going to think I'm... I don't even know," she said, sniffing. "Half of the questions seemed like they were implying things about me, or about you, and I'm still not sure what."

"It's not that bad," he said, trying his best to sound comforting. "There were already people who believed all kinds of bad things about me—and about you, by extension—and I don't know if there's any way you could've changed their minds. Probably not. But there are plenty of people who are going to see an awkward girl who isn't used to the media and who's being ganged up on by reporters. Some people are going to like you more because of that."

"Nobody's going to see a hero, though," she said mournfully. "Nobody's going to watch that video and think 'boy am I glad she's out there keeping me safe.'"

"That's not something you do with words," he said. "Or, maybe some people can, but I can't. I'm good with words, but I don't have the charisma to pull that off. There've been times it felt like everyone hated me, but I just kept my head down and kept helping as many people as I could, and eventually most of them came back around. They'll come around on you, too."

"I didn't mess it up too badly?" she asked timidly. "I can still be Supergirl?"

"Of course you can, if you want," Clark assured her. "Being a hero isn't about getting people to think you're a hero. It's about what you do."

Kara nodded, thinking this over.

"I need to get back to work, if you're okay," he said reluctantly. "And then this evening we'll fly around the city together and see what we find, okay?" They probably wouldn't find much, but he could at least show Kara around.

"Right," Kara said firmly, nodding. "This is just a setback. It's not the important part."

"Exactly." Clark gave her a final hug, a hard squeeze like he couldn't give anyone else, and flew back to the  _ Planet _ office.

"Hell of a day to take a long lunch, Smallville," Lois said when she saw him come in.

"It wasn't long," he protested, situating himself at his desk. "Half an hour, tops."

"Today, anything other than scarfing something down at your desk is long," she said. He'd always envied her ability to carry on a conversation and type up a story at the same time. When he tried, he ended up typing what he was trying to say or saying what he was trying to type. "Metropolis has a brand new superhero, and the press just ate her alive."

"Are you going to start adding Supergirl stuff to 'Eye on the Sky'?" he asked. It would be sort of nice if Lois' column wasn't always about him.

"Not yet, I don't think," she said. "I might see if I can get a statement from Superman about how things went today, but for now, he's still the one people want to hear about. Besides, after today, I wouldn't blame the kid if she decided to try and find some other city to protect. Maybe even some other planet."

"I guess we'll see," he said.

"Honestly, it might be better if she did," Lois said. "Better for Superman, I mean. The anti-alien crowd has definitely latched onto the idea that she's the first in a new 'master race' or something, either because Superman had a kid with a human or because she and Superman are going to start having kids."

"She did deny both of those," he pointed out.

"She gave science lectures to both questions," Lois said. "Might've been different if Superman had been the one to say it, but from a teenage girl dressed like a sexy schoolgirl, people are going to find it condescending. They're not going to believe her. Plus, she did sort of imply that Adam and Eve starting the human race all by themselves would've been impossible. People aren't going to be happy about that, either."

"Ugh, I didn't even think of that," Clark said, sinking his head into his hands.

Religious fundamentalists were, as a whole, not particularly fond of Superman. Some of them thought he was a demon, or even the Antichrist. This was just going to give them more fuel.

"Don't take it so personally, Smallville," Lois said. "It would've looked worse if she'd only called on us. At least this way everything's out in the open."

Don't take it personally, as a journalist who'd been in the room during that trainwreck. Right.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "I just feel bad for the kid. She seems nice."

"I need to get another interview with her," Lois said speculatively. "We can play up that angle, get her some sympathy."

"That won't make anyone think she's any more heroic, though," Clark said.

"Heroic shmeroic," Lois said, still typing away. "As long as she isn't making it seem like this paper's been kissing the ass of someone who was secretly planning to take over the world, I'll be happy."

Right, of course. Lois had only met Kara once, and didn't really have any reason to care about her.

"You don't think they're going to breed a new race of superhumans or something, do you?" he asked.

"Nah," she said, shaking her head. "I think they really do see each other as family, and anyway, I don't think Superman would want to make somebody else stuck being the last Kryptonian. Although honestly, it might be better for us if they did. Us the human race, I mean, not us the newspaper. Well, that too, I guess."

"You think being taken over by an alien race would be good for humans?" Clark asked, confused.

"Obviously not," she said, rolling her eyes at him. "But it might be good to have one more generation of protection from, you know, all the stuff Superman protects us from. I mean, who knows how long he's going to live? Maybe he's burning up from the inside, with all that power, and he's going to kick it in a couple more years. I don't think even he knows."

Clark frowned, contemplating the idea. Dr. Hamilton had told him that as far as they could tell from examining his cells, and especially what they thought were his equivalent of telomeres, it seemed like he might not age at all, or at least, very slowly. But it wasn't like Dr. Hamilton would know what the cells of someone who was burning up from the inside from having more power than anybody ought to would look like.

"You should see if Perry'll let you write something from that angle," she suggested. "I give you this generous gift, because I've got enough to do covering the sympathetic angle, after today."

"Too late," said Steve Lombard, one of the other reporters, who was rushing to their boss' office like journalism was a footrace. "Dibs."

"Looks like you snoozed and lose-d," Lois said, amused. "Better find something to write, though."

"There are things going on in the world that are unrelated to Supergirl," Clark muttered. "I'm sure I can find one of those to cover."

"Way to have ambitions," Lois said sarcastically. "'Maybe I can find something boring to write about.'" She adopted a deep voice and an exaggerated parody of a Midwestern accent for that line, suggesting that she was imitating him.

"Not every day can be a front-page day," he said.

"Not with that kind of attitude."

She and Steve made the front page, different perspectives on what Supergirl's presence, and horrible press conference performance, meant for Earth. Clark's byline was on the second page of the Metro section. Maybe once Kara was actually settled in he could care about stuff like that again.


	3. Kara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: mentions of drugs, sex work, sexual harassment, and sexual assault

After the disaster of a press conference, Kara was okay with being sort of an "apprentice" hero for a while. For a few weeks, the only hero-ing she did was flying around Metropolis with Clark. (She was sort of glad that he was the most available when it was dark out, or at least getting there; it meant that fewer people stared up at them.)

"Metropolis has the lowest crime rate of any city in the country," Clark told her, sounding like he wasn't sure whether to be proud of or embarrassed by that fact. "At least for, you know, the kind of crimes that we can see and stop. There's not all that much I can do about something like embezzlement."

Clark broke up a fight between two drunks just by landing between them. He got a young woman whose car had stalled in the middle of a busy intersection to safety. (Kara helped carry the car, not because it was too heavy for Clark to lift or anything, but because more points of force meant less chance of just ripping the roof off instead of actually lifting the thing.) He showed Kara how to spot drug dealers, and how to search them as non-invasively as possible, to see what they were carrying.

"If they just have weed, I don't bother them," he explained. "Or shrooms, or something relatively harmless like that. Heroin or any form of cocaine, I take them in. If they've just got pills, it's hard to see exactly what those are, so I leave them alone unless they're also armed."

"But all of those substances are against the law, right?" Kara asked, confused. Intentionally altering one’s state of consciousness with chemicals hadn’t been a part of Kryptonian culture. (Maybe it had been in the distant past, but Brainiac liked people to be nice and predictable.) So she was still getting a handle on the whole “drugs” thing. The “War on Drugs” had been mentioned in some of Ma’s books, but always with the assumption of a level of background knowledge that she lacked.

"Yeah, but some of them shouldn't be," he said. "I try not to impose my own judgement too much, but I'm not going to get someone arrested just for pot. I mean, I  _ have _ to pick and choose, you know? It's not like I'm pulling people over for speeding. I have to draw the line somewhere. I'm sure the police would prefer if I brought in small-time dealers and addicts and sex workers, but I'm not going to do that."

He showed Kara Metropolis' "red light" district (which didn't actually contain any red lights), and introduced her to some of the sex workers.

"Your cousin's a good guy," a very attractive woman with red hair and generous curves told Kara. "We can't call the cops if we're in trouble, but we all know we can yell for Superman and he'll help, unless he's busy saving the world."

"Which is fine," another woman cut in. She was tall and dark-skinned, and every time she took her cigarette out of her mouth she left a little more of her lipstick on it, which entranced Kara for reasons she didn't want to examine too closely. "Saving the world's good. We live here too."

"Well, you can yell for me too, if you need," Kara said.

"Hey, did Krypton have hookers?" the redhead asked.

"Everywhere has hookers," the dark-skinned woman said dismissively.

"I don't know," Kara said. "The economy worked very differently there, and so did relationships, so... I don't think so?"

"Or you just didn't know about it," the dark-skinned woman pointed out.

"Maybe," Kara admitted.

She wasn't sure why the conversation stuck in her head (aside from how beautiful the women were, and that growing smudge of lipstick that had been so fascinating) until several days later, when she realized it was the first time someone other than Clark had asked about Krypton to try to find some sort of common ground. It felt strangely welcoming.

"I think you're ready to try it on your own," Clark said after three weeks. She'd just helped him evacuate a burning building. Breathing smoke felt funny, because she could tell she wasn't getting any oxygen from it, but it didn't seem to cause any problems for her. "Just small stuff, okay? Call me if you need me. But you can take the day shift, while I'm at work."

"Yes!" she cheered, and hugged him hard, then immediately let go. "I promise, I definitely won't hug any humans like that. I just did it because you hug me that hard sometimes."

"I know, Kara," he said, smiling. "I wouldn't let you go out on your own if I thought you were going to squish people."

Somehow, though, once Clark wasn't there, everything seemed to go wrong. She picked someone up who had matched Clark's description of a dangerous drug dealer and flown him to the police station, ignoring his protests, only to learn that he wasn't working for organized crime but for the police themselves, who apparently were using him as a kind of lure. She tried to help a woman whose steering had stopped working and whose car had crashed into a barrier on the side of the road, but the woman kept moving her hands over her own chest, making some kind of shape, and refused to let Kara touch her.

"I don't need help from a demon!" she spat—actually  _ spat _ . Kara could feel the saliva hit her face.

"Okay," she said. "Well, call for me if you need me, I guess?"

"You'll never get your talons into my soul," the woman said.

"Um... have a nice day," Kara said, and flew off.

And then there had been a man who yelled "Supergirl, help!" from inside his apartment, but when she got there he had his pants off and he was... well, he really didn't need her help, but it took her a minute to figure out what was going on and leave. Human men were  _ gross _ .

"Ah, jeez, I'm sorry, Kara," Clark said when she told him about it. Apparently  _ that _ was part of why he'd told her to always scan a building before she entered. She'd assumed it was just to gauge the level of threat she'd be facing. "People still do that to me sometimes. Not as often as they used to, but for a while there were uh... kind of a lot of them."

He explained that when women did that, they seemed to expect him to be  _ happy _ to have been tricked and to want to, well, join in. Unlike Kara's... "fan"... who had apparently just wanted to hit her with his stream of ejaculate, and didn't expect her to be any happier about it than she was. She was glad she’d managed not to cry until after she left.

"But what if someone's really, I don't know, having a heart attack or something?" she asked, and he made her spend a few days just hanging out on the roof of the biggest hospital in Metropolis, learning what different kinds of sounds signified, heart attacks and seizures and other emergencies. She wasn't sure if Clark had realized it would be the first time she heard someone die, or at least, the first time she heard it and knew what was happening.

She also heard childbirth, which was apparently  _ excruciating _ for human women, which didn't make any sense—they had such wide hips!—until she saw some human infants. Their heads were enormous! Apparently most of their brain formation happened in utero, which seemed like a much worse way to do it than the Kryptonian system. Kryptonian infants' heads were proportional with their bodies.

Clark laughed at her when she told him that human babies were creepy.

There weren't any more really dramatic incidents after that, not like the woman who'd called her a demon or the man who'd masturbated at her, but nothing seemed to go quite right. She badly damaged a car while trying to move it off the road; she dislocated a construction worker's shoulder when she caught him falling off a scaffolding; she brought in someone she  _ thought _ was a drug dealer but was apparently a registered gun owner who just had a lot of pills on him. She even read a situation wrong and almost brought the wrong person to the police station, a woman who was defending herself against a violent partner, but luckily the expression of hateful glee on the man's face made her pause and reassess.

"I messed up a lot at first, too," Clark reassured her over dinner. "You're doing better than I did, when I started out. Trust me. You'll get the hang of it."

"But when you started out, nobody had a better superhero to compare you to," she said miserably. Even Earth food couldn't cheer her up right now, not even the chicken fingers that Clark bought when he saw that she was upset. "Everybody's watching and wondering how I can be doing such a bad job when you're so good at it."

"That's not true," Clark said. "I'm sure they're very grateful—"

"I heard people talking about it!" she told him. "The cops basically hate me, that construction worker was complaining that he couldn't sue me—even people I've never met are talking about how much worse I am at this than you!"

"I'm kind of... larger than life to a lot of people," Clark said. "You aren't yet, but that doesn't mean you won't be. And trust me, it's not actually as great as it might seem right now."

"Maybe if they dislike me enough, they'll stop trying to hit me with  _ semen _ ," she muttered. She analyzed and avoided at least a couple of fake calls for help every day. It wasn't really that hard, now that she realized it was a thing; people who really needed help called for Superman. She was, at best, a barely-acceptable substitute.

"It'll be okay," Clark repeated, but as much as she trusted him, she didn't quite believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kara is having a hard time. =( I promise it will get better.


	4. Lois

Lois was selfishly glad that Superman hadn't suggested bringing Supergirl along to any of their rooftop dinners. She was also just a little bit pettily unhappy that he kept talking about her.

"People don't  _ like _ her," he told Lois.

"People are always going to resent both of you," she told him bluntly. "In your case, it's tempered by all the hero-worship and the fact that everybody knows you've saved all our lives. In her case, it's made worst by the fact that she's a cute blonde girl. You know how many men are going crazy right now trying to figure out a way to fit a cute blonde girl in a short skirt who could definitely snap their head off one-handed into their worldviews? All of them. All the men."

"She's been having some problems with men," Superman muttered. He didn't elaborate, but Lois could put the pieces together.

"Yeah, well, that's how some of them are dealing with it," she said. "If she's a fetish object, she's less of a threat to their masculinity."

Superman sighed, thunking his head against the wall they were leaning against.

"I was so excited to have help," he said sadly. "I thought other people would be excited, too. We can do twice as much good together."

"That's math," Lois said dismissively. "Math doesn't have anything to do with feelings."

"So what am I supposed to do, then?" he asked. "I keep telling her it'll get better, but I don't know that for sure. I don't know how to help her."

"Hire a PR person?" Lois suggested, half serious. "I don't know. I'm sorry. We could do another interview, if she hasn't been completely scared out of ever talking to the media again."

"She knows I trust you," he said, giving her a half-smile that, ugh, really  _ shouldn't _ make her feel all mushy inside. "That wouldn't be a problem."

"Honestly, a televised interview might help more," Lois admitted reluctantly. "I know some TV reporters who aren't complete monsters."

"You'd give up the scoop to help her out?" Superman asked. He sounded honestly touched.

"I mean, don't go shouting it from the rooftops," she said. "I have a reputation to maintain. But yeah, she seems like a good kid. People will like her more if they can see her just… being a good kid."

"I won't tell anyone you're secretly nice," he said fondly.

"Ugh, don't even say it out loud," she said, exaggerating a shudder. "Changing the subject: if it helps, I think people outside of Metropolis might actually like her more than the people here do. Not more than they like you, or anything, but I've talked to some people and I get the impression that more of the goodwill towards you has spilled over onto her, outside of Metropolis."

"Huh." He looked puzzled. "Why do you think that is?"

"I think it's like..." She searched for an analogy. "If you're from a city, you might have feelings about individual members of its football team, right? You hate the quarterback but you love the defensive linemen, you've got mixed feelings about the coach but you think the new kicker has real potential. Or whatever. But unless you're  _ really _ into football, you probably don't have feelings about individual players on another city's team. Team Supers is Metropolis' team. People in other cities might like you both or dislike you both, but mostly they're not going to have separate opinions on each of you. Other than the whole threatened-masculinity thing, anyway. But I think even that is less of a big deal outside of Metropolis, because you and she are like... a package deal."

Superman appeared to consider this for a moment.

"Well, part of the reason I was excited to have her working with me was because sometimes there are problems in two different places at once," he said. "So maybe if there's a problem here and a problem outside Metropolis, I'll send her to that one.

"Couldn't hurt," Lois said. "How have  _ you _ been feeling about all this?"

"Eh," he said, grimacing a little. "A lot of the people who've always hated me are getting more attention now than they have in a while, since hating her isn't old news. Mostly I'm worried about her, though. I'm used to it."

"Well, in some ways, she's probably the person on Earth you need to worry the least about," Lois said. "Being bulletproof, and everything."

"Heh, yeah, I guess," he conceded. "I'm sorry, I've been talking about me and her the whole time. How've you been?"

"Oh, same as usual," she said. "Except for the people who want to find proof that Supergirl is secretly our love-child. They're  _ really _ entertaining. Poring over every old picture of me and every vacation I've taken, looking for evidence of alien pregnancy. Luckily, I always look fabulous."

"You do," he agreed. "I don't know how they could think that would work, though. She's eighteen-ish, you're, uh, 29-ish..."

"I'm 32," she said, amused. "But I appreciate your tact. Anyway, they're working on the theory that Kryptonians might age faster than humans, so maybe she's only a couple of years old."

"Sure, why not," he sighed. "Not any less scientific than thinking we'd be able to reproduce with humans, I guess."

"You look pretty human," she said. "Sure, you can _ tell  _ people that we're more closely related to, I don't know, bananas than we are to Kryptonians, but it doesn't feel right. And besides, Spock was half-human and half-alien."

"Oh, of course," he said, smiling. "So obviously it's possible. I don't know what I was thinking, going against the biology of Star Trek."

"Exactly," she said. She hesitated a moment. "Hey, so... I know that you know more people than you've made it public you know. Wow, that sentence made  _ no _ sense."

"No, I got it," he assured her. Which was good, because she couldn't really think of a better way to put it without announcing to the world at large (Lex could have listening devices up here for all she knew) that Superman had a human family and presumably had made human friends during his human(ish) childhood.

"You're not, uh, seeing any of them, are you?" she asked.

"Lois..." He sighed. "I have really good control over my strength. I mean, I have to. Otherwise I'd just hurt the people I'm trying to help. But there are times when I have considerably  _ less _ control. And humans are really very fragile."

"Oh." It was nice that he was opening up, but she really didn't like what he was saying. "So you're worried you could hurt me. Er, someone. Anyone you got involved with."

"I did hurt someone," he confessed, not looking at her. "She recovered, but... I hurt her pretty bad. I didn't mean to. And we weren't even... it was just..."

"But there must be ways around it," she said.

"I can't have a physical relationship with a human," he said firmly. "It would be way too risky for them. It was such a  _ minor _ accident, Lois. We weren't even doing much. I sent her to the hospital."

"Jeez." Lois sighed. "Sucks that the only other Kryptonian is your cousin, then, I guess."

"Even if she wasn't, I wouldn't necessarily have feelings for her," he said. "I just don't get to act on my feelings."

"For me," she half-asked.

"Yeah." He sighed. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry for that," she said.

"Well, I'm sorry it can't work."

"We could try..."

"No." There was so much finality in the way he said it. "Find someone else, Lois. We'll always be friends. But if we were in a relationship, you'd never get to go past first base again. I don't think you want to give that up."

"Yeah, not so much." She sighed. "Well, fuck."

"Specifically not that," he said, and she looked at him in confusion for a second before laughing.

"You're a dork," she said fondly.

"Yeah," he admitted. "I ought to get going. I told Supergirl I'd show her some active volcanoes tonight, try to explain what to look for that would mean there's an emergency about to start."

"Okay," she said. "Thanks for, you know. Explaining."

"You're welcome," he said, and he was gone.

Lois sighed and leaned back against the wall. Well, there went a few years of pining down the drain. Or, not  _ pining _ , that made her sound pathetic. Just sort of... not really entertaining the idea of anything serious with anyone but Superman. One-night stands, "whenever we're both free" hookups that lasted a couple months, that was all.

What was she supposed to do now? Get an OKCupid or something and just... try to move on? Dating sucked, and besides, she was busy.

So it was fine, really. Nothing had to change. She'd get over him in her own time, and someday she'd meet a single dad who would teach her not to be such a workaholic, or some other romcom bullshit. No need to rush it.

There was a little corner of her mind that wistfully said that maybe a relationship with Superman would be worth it even if it meant she had to give up on sex, but honestly, there was no way. She  _ wanted _ him, and she really really liked sex. Some people could have relationships that didn't involve sex and be fine, but not her. Even if it did feel like giving up without even trying, which definitely wasn't her usual MO.

Dammit, she'd never even kissed him.


	5. Clark

Kara was fascinated by the volcanoes Clark showed her. Apparently Krypton had been completely tectonically inert, so she'd never seen anything like them. And he had to admit, it was pretty awesome to be able to put your hand into molten rock without it hurting—at least, the cooler lava that ran sluggishly down the side of Kīlauea. Actually going  _ into _ a volcano was hot enough to hurt.

He explained about pressure buildups and how to tell molten from solid rock when you were looking at it through the side of the mountain, and tried not to think about Lois. It was good that he'd finally cleared the air with her, really. She deserved to know that waiting for him was pointless. The fact that he'd had such an amazing woman actually willing to wait for him, and he'd had to tell her to give up... it had been the right thing to do, but that didn't keep it from eating him up inside. He wondered if she'd still want to be friends.

He concentrated on Kara for the next few weeks. She needed his support. She tagged along on an earthquake rescue—not a huge one, but it was in Virginia, so they weren't exactly prepared for earthquakes—and a hostage negotiation in the Metropolis suburbs. The police handled that one; the two of them had just been on hand to help.

Five days a week, he saw Lois at work, and she seemed almost the same as ever, but every once in a while he'd hear a sigh coming from her desk. She left a note on the ceiling of the  _ Planet _ building telling him that she still wanted to be friends, but that she needed some space for a little while, "rescues not included." So he had dinner with Kara, either in his apartment or back at the farm or in Metropolis restaurants. She'd learned how to hold her face in a human configuration and to adopt a separate voice from the one she used as Supergirl, although she couldn't just effortlessly do it all day like he did, and she wore pink-rimmed glasses and a black wig when they were out together in civilian clothes.

But all of his favorite food places were Lois' favorites, too—he'd learned about all of them from Lois—so it was inevitable that they'd run into each other. He and Kara were waiting for a table at a sushi restaurant when Lois walked in to pick up her to-go order.

"Hey, Smallville," she said, smiling when she saw him. "Who's the kid?"

"Hi, Lois," he said. "This is my cousin Kara. I mentioned her to you a while back. Kara, this is Lois."

"He's mentioned you to me, too," Kara said, shaking Lois' hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Of course he did," Lois said, smirking. "How long have you been in town?"

"She just got out here today," Clark said. It was a Friday. "She's staying for the weekend."

"He's probably going to take you to the boring, tourist-y places," Lois informed Kara. "Your cousin is a little bit of a stick in the mud."

"I don't mind doing tourist things," Kara said. "And Clark is great."

"You're adorable," Lois said. "If I don't have anything better to do, I'll stop by and rescue you from him sometime this weekend. Love your glasses, by the way."

"Thank you!" Kara said, beaming.

"Ah, that's my order," she said. "Ciao, Smallville and Star City." She waved as she walked out with her bag. (It contained just enough sushi for one person, Clark couldn't help but notice. It was selfish of him to be glad.)

"Star City?" Kara asked him quietly when they were seated.

"That's where Ma's family lives," he said, equally quiet. "So that's where you'd be from. I sort of implied to Lois that they were abusive and you needed my help to get away from them. I'm sorry, I should have told you earlier."

"No, that's fine." Kara paused, then too-casually added, "She seems nice. And pretty."

"Yeah, she is," Clark said. The server came by to take their order then, and he thought he'd been saved, but Kara stopped up again as soon as they left.

"I know you're scared of hurting her, but—"

"Terrified," Clark said bluntly. "I'd never forgive myself."

"But you know what you're doing now," she persisted. "Better than you did when you were in high school, anyway."

"It's not worth the risk, Kara," he said.

Kara nodded reluctantly, and they talked about the history of sushi until theirs arrived at the table. This was her first time eating sushi, but she didn't have any of the reluctance some people had about trying sushi for the first time, Clark noticed. Probably because she didn't really have any preconceptions about raw fish.

"This is really good," she said.

"Careful with the wasabi," he warned, and helped her find the right ratio of fish to soy sauce to spice. They'd eaten nearly all of it before she started up again.

"Do you love her?" she asked, out of nowhere.

"I don't know," he said. "Probably, yeah."

"Do you think she loves you?"

"Maybe." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"Love's worth fighting for," she told him. "Even if it doesn't seem possible..."

"This isn't like you and In-Ze," he said, lowering his voice on the inhuman name. "People would disapprove, and we might have to hide it, and she might even lose her job, yeah. If that was all it was, and she was willing to take that risk, I'd go for it. But I could  _ kill _ her, Kara. With my own hands. I can't risk that."

"Fine," she sighed. "I'm sorry. I won't bug you about it anymore. It's just so unfair."

"It is," he agreed.

He paid the check, and the two of them walked back to his apartment together. It was hot out; a lot of the humans had their shirts stuck to them by sweat. He sniffed and frowned. The smell of human sweat wasn't especially unpleasant to him, but there was another smell under it. Not quite gas station gasoline, not quite a kerosene grill...

"Clark?" Kara said uncertainly. "Those sound like the bad kind of screams."

Yep, now that he listened, there were screams coming from the same direction as the smell of something chemical and flammable. He nodded to Kara, and they ducked into an alley before speeding back to his apartment, shedding their outer layers, and heading towards the screams.

The smell of accelerant was apparently coming from a redheaded woman who was shooting fire from her hands and ranting. Well, that was one of the things he hadn't had a chance to show Kara: a supervillain fight.

"Never again, you hear me?" the fire-woman yelled. She hadn't actually immolated any civilians, but she was definitely shooting fire in the direction of some bystanders, and scorching the brick of the houses around her. "They think they can bury me, but they won't be able to bury this!"

"Is she one of your regulars?" Kara asked.

"Nope, she's new," he said. "Follow my lead. We don't know exactly what she can do."

Clark landed between the fire-lady and the newsstand she was about to incinerate, using his cape to block it.

"Hi there," he said. She hadn't hurt anyone yet; no need to start off hostile. "You really need to stop doing that."

"I'm so fucking tired of being told what to do!" she yelled, shooting another blast of fire and scorching the sidewalk. Some of the grass started smoldering, and Kara put it out without prompting before returning to her spot at his side.

"Who's been telling you what to do?" he asked. "Maybe I can help you."

"You're going to help me, all right," she said. "You're going to get me in the news. Everybody's going to hear about me. They can't just make me disappear after a fight with Superman."

She shot another blast of fire, this one directly up into the sky.

"My name is Volcana!" she yelled at nobody in particular. "I'm a human being, god dammit!"

"Either you need to stop it with the fire, or we need to continue this conversation somewhere that you can't do any damage," he said.

"Oh, I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you," she said, and continued with some kind of rant, but he was distracted by another sound, this one lower and farther away. Of course. One disaster at a time was too easy.

"Earthquake?" Kara asked him.

"Sounds like California," he said. Well, part of the reason he'd been looking forward to having Kara's help was so that they could deal with two emergencies at once. If she hadn't been here, he would've had to find somewhere fireproof to stash this "Volcana" woman until the earthquake was dealt with, which probably wouldn't have improved her mood. "I'll stay here, you go there?"

"On it!" she said, and she was off. A blast of fire hit Clark as she left.

"Excuse me, am I interrupting your conversation?" Volcana asked sarcastically.

"You're interrupting a lot of things," Clark said, probably more sharply than he should have. He wasn't happy about sending Kara off to deal with an emergency on her own. "What exactly is your problem?"

She answered the question at length, accompanied by several more blasts of fire. Something about the government having locked her up and experimenting on her and being after her. Clark was in no way qualified to distinguish between a genuine grievance and untreated paranoid schizophrenia, although he assumed that the fact that she had some kind of pyrokinesis made it more likely that someone had been experimenting on her. The real problem was that he couldn't take her to the police or to any kind of mental health professional while she was still shooting fire like that.

He really hoped Kara was doing okay with the earthquake. He might be stuck in Metropolis for a while.


	6. Kara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for updates being more sporadic than promised recently; real life has been a bumpy ride lately.

Kara really hoped Clark was doing okay with the fire lady, because it looked like she was going to be stuck in California for a while.

Earthquake response in California was really different from earthquake response in Virginia. The good news was that the people out here were more prepared; the buildings were built to get through earthquakes, and nobody was completely freaking out. The bad news was that the earthquake had been worse, and had been in a really populated area. The Gold City Bay had Gold City on one side and Jump City on the other, and both of them had taken some serious damage.

She stopped the tsunami that had been headed for Gold City—a small one, as such things went, but it still could have done some damage—and then went into the city to help out, carefully lifting debris off of people and getting them to medical help. Word that she was there must have spread fast, because she'd only been helping out in Gold City for a little while when she heard someone yelling "Supergirl, help!" from across the Bay.

If someone was taking advantage of this crisis for masturbatory purposes, she was going to drop them off at the police station, she decided grimly. But that wasn't it at all.

"Oh, thank goodness," the man who'd called for help said when she showed up in front of him. "Supergirl, the earthquake knocked out the power to the UCJC Medical Center, and took out one of the backup generators. They're going to be completely out of power soon, and people are going to die. Can you help?"

"I'll do my best," she said honestly. "Do you know where the break in the power line is?"

He gave her a brief description of where he was pretty sure the problem was, and she flew off, looking for broken lines. It didn't take her long to find it. Getting to it was trickier; it was underground, and she didn't want to mess with the intact plumbing system while she was trying to get at it. She managed to get to both ends of the cable, but realized that if she just grabbed them, the power would go through her and lock up all her muscles. Even if she managed to grab the part where the insulation hadn't been stripped off, with this amount of electricity, she might have trouble.

She quickly found a wrecked car, yanked off one of the bumpers, and returned to the site of the break, carefully placing the bumper between the two ends of the cable so that the electricity would, hopefully, go through it instead of her while she worked. Then she grabbed the ends of the cable and dragged them together, not letting either lose contact with the bumper as she went, and used her heat vision to weld them together. Then she grit her teeth and grabbed the bumper, ignoring the muscle-locking feeling while she pulled it away from the cables—she couldn't just leave it there all electrified like that, or a human could touch it and get hurt.

It was a temporary fix—her weld wasn't exactly expert, and she couldn't do anything to fix the stripped insulation—but the hospital ought to have power. She borrowed some orange cones from an emergency response team and set them around the hole she'd made, then went back to the hospital to make sure it had worked.

"Thank you so much," the man who had called for her before said. "You just saved dozens of lives, at least."

"I'm glad I could help," she said. "Are you a doctor here?"

"Oh, no, all the doctors are busy doctoring," he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. "My name is Carlos Valdez. I'm a professor of astronomy at UCJC—er, the University of California Jump City. It's a much less useful discipline in an emergency, except that apparently it meant I was the only one who thought to call for help! We haven't had a superhero in the area since the Green Lantern left Coast City, and he'd come up here to help out sometimes, but he definitely didn't have hearing like yours! I'm sorry, I'm probably keeping you from something more important. It's just that I specialize in xenology but I've never actually met an alien before. Er, you don't object to the term, do you?"

"Not at all," she assured him, amused. "I actually wanted to be a xenologist, back before, you know. And personally, I like aliens."

"Oh, good," he said, smiling. "Listen, could I give you my card? It would be amazing to have you come out to the university sometime when there's not an ongoing crisis. I know you and Superman have an arrangement with STAR Labs, but from what they've published, that seems to have focused more on what you can  _ do _ than on what you  _ know _ . There must be so much that you could teach us, and I'm sure it would be an inadequate trade, but surely there would be things that we could teach you about the Earth—oh dear, I'm babbling and keeping you from your work, aren't I."

"I'd be happy to take your card, but I probably should go and see if the emergency teams need any more help," she said apologetically. She would have thought that this kind of fawning would make her uncomfortable, but after the cold shoulder she'd been getting in Metropolis, it was a refreshing change of pace. The only kind of attention she'd been getting in Metropolis was... oh dear. How exactly could she determine whether this man's interest in her was prurient in nature? She was fairly certain that just asking was considered rude. 

"Wonderful!" he said, handing her a little rectangle of cardboard. "Thank you for everything you're doing for us, Supergirl."

"You're welcome," she said. She'd talk to Clark about this exchange later and see if he found it suspicious, she decided. And maybe Ma, too. "See you around."

Kara flew off to continue helping the earthquake victims. All of them seemed genuinely glad to have her there, not upset that she wasn't Superman instead. There was some sort of electrical fire (on the wrong side of the Bay to be the result of her slapdash electrical work, thank goodness) and she got quite a few people out of buildings threatened by flames or smoke, including some families with weird, big-headed Earth babies. She did her best to act like she found them cute, but they just looked weird to her, disproportionate and wrong. She had to remind herself that she was lucky that all humans didn't look like that to her, now that she'd gotten over their subtly different faces.

Clark had contained the fire lady by the time Kara got back to Metropolis. Apparently she could only make fire manifest at the location of her hands, so he just got her hands locked into airtight rubber gloves.

"It sounds awful, but I sort of hope she's mentally ill," he confided to Kara later, as the two of them flew over a brightly-lit Metropolis night. "If all the stuff she was saying about the government is true, that's really bad. I'll look into it during my day job. It's been too long since I picked up a real lead. How was the earthquake cleanup?"

"This also sounds kind of awful, but it was actually really good," she said, and explained how much more welcoming people outside of Metropolis seemed to be. He nodded appreciatively when she described how she'd handled the power outage, and shared her concerns about Professor Valdez.

"It's hard to say," he said. "Some people are just really enthusiastic about knowledge, but... well, no guarantees. What did you think about his offer, assuming he was on the level?"

"I think it sounded great," she said honestly. "I'd love to be able to pass on some of Krypton's knowledge, and there's so much I don't know about Earth: history and languages and art and biology and  _ everything _ ."

"UCJC is a really prestigious school," he told her. "I'm sure they could teach you a lot about history and literature and stuff like that, if that's something you're interested in, but it's also probably one of the places you'd be most likely to find people who could help you find commonalities between Kryptonian math and science and Earth math and science."

"Shouldn't math and science be the same everywhere?" she asked, frowning. "Less advanced, perhaps, but—"

"Sure, but the names for things are going to be different," he pointed out. "Like trying to translate between Krypton's time notation and Earth's. I'm okay at math, but I really haven't been able to make much sense of the stuff in the ship's database."

"You should have said!" Kara admonished. "I could have helped you with it."

Clark shrugged.

"I don't know how much use it would be," he said. "I'm more interested in the music you mentioned before."

"Right," she said, chagrined. It had seemed logical that a Kryptonian of the House of El would easily be able to decipher the inner workings of a primitive sound reproduction device, but so far she had only been able to disassemble several sound systems; actually putting them back together in working order, let alone getting them to interface with the ship, still eluded her... which did sort of prove Clark's point about science, despite theoretically being the same everywhere, not necessarily translating perfectly. "I'll figure it out one of these days, Clark. I promise."

"I know you will," he said, smiling at her fondly. "And hey, if you're interested in this offer but it turns out that Professor Valdez is some kind of creep, I'm sure you could get similar offers from other universities. Just get the word out and they'd probably be lining up to try to recruit you."

A cry for help from below interrupted their conversation: a multi-car pileup just outside the city. She and Clark turned towards it as one.

It was a long day, but at the end of it, she'd helped so many people that she'd lost count, and that mattered more than universities or accolades or even acceptance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, going with my "DC cities are renamed US cities" thing, Gold City is San Fancisco and Jump City is Berkeley and its environs, so UCJC is UC Berkeley, an extremely prestigious university. This may be relevant later. =P


End file.
